Like so many anglophones, the Walker family decamped down the 401 to Toronto in the late ’70s, exiled by the twin forces of a shifting economy — as head offices moved to T.O. — and a political climate inhospitable to English-speaking Quebecers.

More than three decades later, John Walker is still troubled by that move. That’s why he decided to make the powerful documentary Quebec My Country Mon Pays.

The seasoned filmmaker, who now lives in Halifax, charts his family’s trajectory but also looks at the bigger picture of a slice of modern Canadian history seldom explored on film.

He talks to an eclectic array of Quebecers in the documentary, including Oscar-winning director Denys Arcand and author and filmmaker Jacques Godbout, and covers everything from the two communities’ very different reactions to the FLQ terrorism in the ’60s and early ’70s right up to anglos’ ambivalent position in contemporary Quebec.

I spoke to Walker on the phone from Nova Scotia about Quebec My Country Mon Pays, which screens at the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal festival on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Montreal Gazette: Your film has already played a couple of festivals in Canada and is now set to screen in your former hometown. How do you feel about it finally premièring in Montreal?

John Walker: I’ve certainly been looking forward to it. The purpose of the film is to have a conversation. I see documentary as all about raising questions, so I hope there will be an interesting conversation in Montreal.

MG: Did you have an audience in mind when you made the film?

JW: That was a real debate for me when I was making the film. I wanted it to be a broadly Canadian film. I recognized that Quebecers of my generation would know some of the context that I had to set up, but I wanted to make it for a broader audience. We’re not taught a lot of history in our schools, so to have some context would be relevant, even in Quebec.

The audience we’ve found so far outside Quebec has been the diaspora of people who left Quebec. We had three sold-out screenings at Hot Docs (in Toronto) and somebody asked … if there were any expats here from Quebec, and at all three screenings at least 70 per cent of the audience were former Montrealers.

MG: How many people left during that period?

JW: The people I talked to on the francophone side said maybe 100,000 (anglos left). The figure that I had was around 300,000 and then as we did further research, just before I finished my narration for the film, Stats Canada came out with new statistics, and the figure’s actually close to 600,000 (from the late ’60s to the late ’90s).

MG: Is the film the story of this exodus?

JW: To be honest, it’s a personal story. I didn’t interview anybody that left. It’s my story. I made a very clear decision not to generalize about the anglophones or francophones. It’s my personal story, about growing up in Quebec and the impact it had on me culturally, and the reasons why I left and why my father had to leave. My sister stayed and some of us left. But it had a major impact. It divided our family.

JW: It came when my father died. That was 2008. I’ve wanted to make this film for a long time. When my father died, that’s when it hit me, and that’s the sequence in the film (where we’re) burying him (in Lachute) and it all came back like a tidal wave on a beach. He was a Montrealer. He had a lot of fun in Montreal. He did well as a graphic artist. He loved Montreal. But his clients were leaving and it was hard for him at 55 (to leave Montreal). His mother and sisters stayed in Quebec. The film is dedicated to him.

MG: You mention in the film how you felt anger and sadness about this migration. What’s your view on the exodus now?

JW: What I (heard often from francophones) was that it was people with money. They took their money and left. That rich people left. Well, (600,000) people didn’t live in Westmount. But the idea was that it was rich people from Westmount who left and took their money with them. There were some of those. I’ve articulated all the complexity of my emotions in the film. I’m not angry. I think anglophones who live in Quebec understand Quebec culture and understand what was going on. I’m always the first, (when I’m) outside of Quebec, in the rest of Canada, to leap to Quebec’s defence. I’m always defending their decisions. A lot of that comes from my own historical background, of being Irish and Scots, and the oppression we were escaping, and the importance of language — the Irish language. There are a lot of similarities between Ireland and Quebec. So I had a great sympathy for culture and language and independence. I voted for (René) Lévesque. I thought this was going to be a social-democratic movement that was going to benefit us all, but there was a certain point when (they were) chanting “Le Québec aux Québécois” that I thought, “Uh-oh.” I didn’t think it included me. As Jacques Godbout says in the film, there was a turn toward ethnic nationalism.

I was trying to understand … why we weren’t liked. Like I say in the film: You’re eight years old, you jump on the hockey rink, and that’s where you’re confronted with the politics of French/English. The French don’t like you and I didn’t know why. I’ve taken a long time to think about why. At 11, as I say in the film, bombs went off three blocks from where my mother went to school. They’re bombing and it’s toward the English. This is serious.

I’m just dealing with all those emotions. It’s a very deeply rooted childhood experience of insecurity and not being liked, and you live with that and you want to understand why. I’ve always wanted to understand more about the culture and what’s going on politically.

MG: There will be very differing reactions to your film here in Quebec. It is made from an English perspective. Are you worried about that reaction?

JW: No. You don’t make a film to be loved by everybody that sees your film. People interpret my films in different ways, in ways that I didn’t think of. So I always find people’s interpretations interesting, and I know there will be a broad range of points of view.

This film has really been connecting. I’ve shown it outside Quebec and it’s really the diaspora that’s been seeing it, and it’s really touching a nerve for them. So I’m very pleased with their reaction. Everyone says, “I just buried those feelings and I didn’t deal with those feelings. And this is letting me feel justified in having those feelings.” Everyone left quietly with their tail between their legs and didn’t really know why they were leaving in some cases. So that community is responding. Then there are the people who stayed. My sister stayed, and it may not be as relevant for somebody who stayed.

MG: Well, it’s interesting because you have the young woman Christina Clarke who worked with you on the film and says she still feels a certain disconnect with Quebec society. And that’s a controversial thing. Some anglophones feel that way, and there are others who feel that we are all equal members of the same society. So that’s a whole debate, as to where the community stands now. Some feel part of an oppressed minority, and others feel there’s no oppression at all.

JW: Everybody has their own story. It just depends on who you interact with, what your job is. That’s why I’m not generalizing in the film. I talked to colleagues who walked the halls of the National Film Board. I talked to my family. I talked to friends. And my researcher happened to have this point of view. It’s more random. The tone of the film is based on my experience and the people I talked to.

Wednesday’s screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Monika Smaz, member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, and including Walker and Lorraine O’Donnell, co-ordinator/researcher with the Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network.

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